Once again, the Advance Digital readers poll was an Alabama-Auburn contest.

And again, because Alabama and Auburn are so strong, even with the bias that comes with a heavy dose of AL.com readers, the result was pretty legitimate.

Alabama's Trey DePriest wound up being the winner of the poll that opened Monday to pick the best linebacker in the SEC for the 2014 season, the sixth week we've run our position-by-position polls of the best in the SEC for next season.

DePriest had 65 tackles last year, 7.5 for loss, while largely being overshadowed by fellow Crimson Tide linebacker C.J. Mosley, the SEC's co-Defensive Player of the Year. In my ranking on Monday, DePriest was picked second behind Georgia's Ramik Wilson, the SEC's leading tackler last season.

Wilson managed just 114 votes in the poll while Tennessee's A.J. Johnson received 148. They were both first-team All-SEC picks by both the Associated Press and the conference coaches.

The Alabama-centric fans opined that despite modest statistics last year, DePriest, who was a second-team All-SEC pick by the AP in 2013, is ready to continue Alabama's tradition of dominant linebacker play.

"DePriest
has been producing for three years, learning from the best (college football) has to
offer," wrote a commenter who goes by the handle, "Bama Baby." "I believe there will be a lot of consternation around the SEC
when they discover just how good the unit DePriest leads really is. A
line from an old movie comes to mind. "Don't worry, little brother,
There's More Coming."

Next week, we'll wrap up the series with a poll on SEC defensive backs starting Monday. In weeks following, we'll look at our early candidates for offensive and defensive player of the year in the league.

Here's a look at how our projections for other positions have compared to the reader poll results. My pick is in parentheses: